A380

Airbus is showing off the A380 in the US this week. And since United is considered a possible candidate to buy this mammoth, a stop in Chicago could not excluded. Through some connections at Lufthansa, who are promoting this A380 tour, my team was able to go and visit the plane while at O'Hare today. Very impressive!

• 239 Feet / 73 meter long - although it looks kind of small, due to the double decks
  
• the tail is 8 stories high - enormous!!!
  
• carries 550 passengers in 3-classes or over 800 in a single class configuration - this plane used a 3-class Airbus configuration, with different types of seats for customer selection
• The upperdeck on this aircraft was configured for both Business and Economy and felt as large as the main cabin
  
• range 8000 miles / 14800 kilometers
• Cost $319M
  

The cockpit is designed to be consistent with other Airbus planes. The Lufthansa pilot told me it took him only 10 days to transition from an Airbus 340 to the A380! The pilots were all raving about how easy it is to fly the plane, 'feels like flying a small plane'.